Monday, August 07, 2006

Aah!

will the driver with the licence plates XUX826 please return to driving school?! Or as least get someone else to drive for you?

needless to say, i was almost involved in quite a serious accident on the way to the station this morning. I was on the exit ramp on the M5, and my lane was moving freely, whilst the right hand lane was stationary. I kept driving, and all of a sudden, with NO indication, this little toyota echo pulled from the stationary lane into my lane, almost driving directly into the front drivers side quarter of my car. I literally slammed on my brakes, and squealed to a stop. There was smoke coming from my wheels. Thank GOD there were no cars behind Me - who knows what would have happened if there had been!

the little echo just kept driving, but we ended up parking almost next to each other at the station. The struggle inside Me was hard. Everything inside Me wanted to go all road rage on her, but i knew that 1) wouldn't achieve anything, and 2) it definitely wasn't a GOD thing to do. :-)

So, i politely told her that maybe next time she drives anywhere, it might pay to actually watch where she's going. That's all i said - seriously. I won't tell you what was going through my mind at the time though.

it's been almost 20 minutes since the near-miss, and my hands have only now stopped shaking. Every muscle in my body is tense. It feels like i've had an accident, but i haven't. Hopefully i'll be find by the time i get to work.

As a cyclist on the Gold Coast I've learned to deal with this sort of behaviour every day. Kudos to you for keeping control in that situation. I agree that it can be difficult to control your reaction, and in the past there were one or two occasions when I did tell people what I thought of them.

In the end though, it doesn't make a lot of difference. Most people don't react positively to total strangers yelling at them, so it's not likely to bring a change of behaviour. These days I just focus on predicting and dealing with these incidents when they happen and leave it at that.